The last few years were extremely hectic and made us change a lot of things in our day-to-day lives. These changes also influenced the way we and our children receive education. More and more educational institutes switch to online learning in order to keep students and teachers safe from various unfortunate threats. And although those changes were forced upon us, little by little they became the new normal even for the most conservative teachers and parents.
Online learning is certainly not a revolutionary thing. Homeschooling and online courses have existed for years, but there was definitely less of them. But now, as demand has risen we can see new developments that are aimed at optimizing the educational process and making it as efficient as possible.
The apps for learning
When we talk about apps and learning, we tend to think about those that help us learn different languages. And that is justified by the fact that they were popular even before everyone switched to digital learning.
As an example we introduce the app that was created by our VRG Soft team.
Learn like Billy is an app that was created with the purpose of making studying English easy and accessible. It has many different types of activities to suit any type of learning that you prefer. Besides, all the grammatical topics and words are divided by level, so you’ll definitely receive a personalized learning plan. You can check it all for yourself: https://learnbilly.com/
Now, there are many apps for learning any subject or skill that you’d like. The topics range from school subjects to professional skills, so you’ll definitely find something you’d like to learn. And there are also many educational apps to choose from to match your learning style best.
So, what are the advantages of learning something through an app?
Different forms of learning
Did you know that there are 4 learning styles?
The VARK model was introduced by Fleming and Mills and it stands for: Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic. The model suggests that every person has a sense that is better developed than others, and therefore using this sense to learn would be more efficient.
If you know how you learn best, you will effortlessly find an app that suits your learning style.
For example, visual learners find it the most efficient to learn through the depiction of information in maps, diagrams, charts, graphs, flow charts, and all the symbolic arrows and circles.
Accessibility of time and place
This one is pretty obvious. When you learn from home you have more control over where and when you study. It is extremely convenient and can boost your productivity if used right.
Additionally, online lectures can be recorded, archived, and shared for future reference. This allows students to access learning material at a time that is convenient for them.
Thus, online learning offers students the accessibility of time and place in education.
Affordability
There are many apps and online courses that are free or quite cheap compared to offline ones. Physical learning requires a lot of things that are costly like real estate and student transportation making it much affordable for the majority of learners and education providers.
But although online learning seems like a highly efficient and convenient method of learning it also has some disadvantages.
If you have no trouble with self-discipline and your devices and the Internet never let you down, then you probably won’t experience these disadvantages. The most common problems that online learners face are as follows: feeling of isolation, increased screen time, which may result in health issues, technological issues, lack of practice-based learning.
How can we optimize the process of online learning?
Feedback is the most significant aspect of any development. Only in that way can you create something that would be efficient for users. In the case of online learning we should consider the opinions of both students and teachers.
For a large number of teachers, using technology to teach can be extremely challenging, since not all of them have extensive knowledge of technology. Educating teachers and making tools that are easy to use will make the teaching process well organized.
As for students, they are mostly familiar with technology, but still prefer a simple and logical app interface. Hence, it is important to create a pleasant interface. Another factor to consider is the variety of activities. In order to retain the attention of students for longer, it is important to provide them with either a choice or just a variety of activity types. This will prolong their attention span and make online learning more productive.
On a final note
Online learning is a separate type of learning, and it should be treated that way. In this article we enlighten the main points of learning through the Internet, and hope that this article will come in handy for those planning to create their own learning app or a web-site.
If you already have an app or a website and wish to optimize it, don’t hesitate to let us know via sales@vrgsoft.net, and we’ll make sure that your app stands out from the rest!